King's College London

About Kings

The King’s community is dedicated to the service of society. King’s Strategic Vision 2029 sets out our vision for the future, shaped around five priority areas: educate to inspire and improve; research to inform and innovate; serve to shape and transform; a civic university at the heart of London; and an international community that services the world. Our ambitious Education Strategy sets out the actions that we must take to transform how we teach, how and where our students learn and how we support them during their time with us.

King’s Careers & Employability seeks to enable and empower students, recent alumni, and researchers from all disciplines and walks of life, to gain the knowledge, skills and experiences they need to effectively navigate their lives and careers after university and achieve lifelong success. The Careers Consultants for Researchers are a team of 3 who sit within the wider Careers Education team of 17 Careers Consultants who develop, deliver and evaluate careers interventions (digital, group and individual) for students and researchers. This is done through our central service as well as working closely with researcher enablers across King’s to integrate and promote careers support where possible.

We are part of the Students & Education Directorate, a collection of wide-ranging professional services in place to support King’s students and researchers. As a directorate we manage the student and researcher lifecycle from application to graduation and beyond, to ensure a coherent and seamless student experience and effective administrative processes, working closely with King’s faculties to do so.

The researcher team is also closely aligned to Research Talent who support PGRs and research staff, as well as the research support teams in faculties and DTEs (Doctoral Training Entities).

About the role

This is an exciting opportunity for candidates looking to work predominantly with postgraduate researchers and research staff as part of the Careers Consultants for Researchers Team, to support development of career management skills and navigating careers in and beyond academia. This could be through in person or online workshops, one to one coaching appointments or designing digital resources.  You’ll work with home and international clients from across all the academic disciplines within King’s.  The ability to proactively build excellent stakeholder relationships across King’s and externally, particularly with the teams supporting researchers, is key.  You’ll be skilled at building rapport with a wide range of people and wish to utilise your excellent interpersonal and relationship building skills to deliver a high-quality service. 

We encourage applications from candidates who have experience from both within and outside of the Higher Education sector where they can demonstrate the skills needed to succeed in this role. 

This post is for 0.9 FTE (31.5 hours per week), and you will be offered an indefinite  contract.  We welcome applications from candidates seeking a flexible work pattern around core delivery hours 10am-4.30pm.

If you think the role sounds interesting and you would like to understand more about it, we are providing two online information sessions where you can hear more about the role and ask questions.

Information session 1: Wednesday 28th August 2024, 2pm-3pm. To join, click on this link.

Information session 2: Monday 2 September, 11-12pm. To join click on this link

For any further enquiries about the role please contact anna.favalessa@kcl.ac.uk or donald.lush@kcl.ac.uk who both work in the careers consultant team for researchers.

About You

To be successful in this role, we are looking for candidates to have the following skills and experience:

Essential criteria

1. Degree or equivalent level education
2. Ability to establish and proactively build professional working relationships with external and internal stakeholders
3. Excellent interpersonal skills with the ability to communicate clearly and appropriately with a range of audiences in different situations. This includes the ability to develop guidance skills to the level needed to work effectively with researchers.
4. Ability to use qualitative and quantitative information to critically evaluate, demonstrate and improve the effectiveness of activities 
5. Ability to plan, prioritise and implement projects and regular tasks as part of a busy workload
6. Willingness and ability to seek new and better ways to deliver an excellent service including embracing technological developments
7. Sufficient work experience to provide understanding of a client’s career management needs. Evidence of an interest in the research environment and the issues researchers face in career management both within and beyond academia. 
8. A commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion 

Desirable criteria

1. A relevant professional qualification in careers and employability (we welcome candidates without a qualification but expect them to commit to acquiring an approved qualification once employed)

Full details of the role and the skills and experience required can be found in the attached job description which is provided on the next page.

Further Information 

We pride ourselves on being inclusive and welcoming. We embrace diversity and want everyone to feel that they belong and are connected to others in our community.

We are committed to working with our staff and unions on these and other issues, to continue to support our people and to develop a diverse and inclusive culture at King's. We ask all candidates to submit a copy of their CV, and a supporting statement, detailing why they are interested in the role and how they meet the essential criteria listed in the advert. If we receive a strong field of candidates, we may use the desirable criteria to choose our final shortlist, so please include your evidence against these where possible.

To find out how our managers review your application, please take a look at our ‘How we Recruit’ pages.

Deadline for applications Sunday 8th September at 23:59

Interviews are due to be held on 18th and 19th September 2024

This role does not meet the requirements of the Home Office and therefore we are not able to offer sponsorship for candidates who require the right to work in the UK.